


"What's the worst that could happen?"

by persephone20



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, TVD episode: 'Disturbing Behavior', TVD episode: 'One Ring to Kill Them All', TVD episode: 'The Reckoning'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Elena stops asking Damon to be Stefan, Alaric gets frustrated and Damon gets to just be Damon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly I'm just posting this so that it's all in the one place and I don't have to go looking for it. A flash fic written back and forth between me and coquellion. This was all started over wanting to write a gen fic about Alaric and Damon making up post events in TVD 4X04.

_Tis quick! But I just wanted to write it out! :D_

\-- ----

He knows that trying to swing the door shut immediately after seeing who's on the other side is worthless - he's too fast and too strong to let that happen - but Alaric tries to slam the door anyway, and isn't surprised when it doesn't even meet the door jamb.

"Ah, ah, ah," Damon chides and Alaric wants to roll his eyes. Which he does. Because what the fuck?

"What do you want, Damon?"

"Just feeling like talking to my buddy," he says smoothly, smirk twisting his lips. Alaric scowls. "Oh, c'mon. You cannot still be mad at me."

"Are you serious right now? You tried to kill me!"

"Oh calm down. We both knew you weren't going to die - you had your ring on." He pushes against the door, but Alaric holds firm. He knows that Damon isn't really trying his hardest to get in - if he was, Alaric would be way across the room right now.

"Still doesn't change anything."

Damon rolls his eyes. "You're going to have to get over it. You can't stay mad at me forever." Alaric is about to inform in that he really can stay mad at Damon for as long as he lives, but the vampire steam rolls right over him. "Seriously, Ric? We both know I've done a lot of things that are way worse. Killing you but not really isn't that big of a deal."

They stare at each other. Alaric notes that there is no hint of remorse in the other man's expression and something bubbles up inside of him. Opening his mouth to tell him to go to hell, he pauses when Damon rolls his eyes again.

"And I brought you this." He holds up a massive bottle of whiskey and Alaric is this close to snapping (he's tired of Damon trying to placate him with alcohol) when the white and gold lettering.

He stares. "You got me Macallen?"

"Sure did."

"That costs forty grand."

Damon's smile is thin lipped. "I know."

The faucet behind him drips and a car alarm goes off in the street. He steps back and Damon's grin makes his eye twitch.

"See," Damon pats Alaric's chest twice, before letting his hand slide off of his body as he passes, "not that hard."

* * *

 _BECAUSE ALARIC ACCEPTS DAMON THE WAY THAT HE IS!!!!!_

 _Oooh, ooh, this just gave me an idea. Another flash fic._

\----- ------

"Ric... we need to talk. About Damon... And you."

Alaric is busy doing the nonchalant, clueless parental-figure bit. Considering he's only picked up this gig for a week and a half, it goes particularly well.

"What are you talking about?"

"When Damon's around, you're acting like a jealous friend. Or a dysfunctional father. Neither image suits you."  
Alaric frowns, but doesn't say anything.

Luckily, Elena doesn't require Alaric to speak for this conversation.

"I know that you and Damon made up your bro friendship again." When Alaric glances up at her, obviously startled, Elena adds, "You smelled of more expensive alcohol than you can afford on your teacher's wage. More so since you've been helping out with bills here."

Alaric starts to attempt some sort of explanation, "It's better to keep Damon on side. You know what he's like--"  
The look in Elena's eyes tells him this will be of no use.

"Face it, Ric. He's wormed his way into your affections... as much as he's wormed himself into mine."

Her words are soft and, for the first time, Alaric really feels like a failure in his role model position. More than when he'd been the history teacher at Elena's 18th birthday that so many of his students had been following the example of. More than the first time Alaric had over-looked Damon killing him, or any time since.

"Elena, I... I should have stopped this."

But Elena shakes her head. "You were never going to stop this." She swallows. "That's up to me, Ric. That's up to me."

Alaric hesitates, then, "I'm meant to be your guardian, Elena."

"Yes." Elena looks as though he'd better give her a really good reason to accept the more that this statement implies.

He rushes a hand through his hair. "People talk in this town, Elena. I have to act--"

She cuts him off. "I don't care what other people say." Her hand makes a slashing gesture in her aggravation. She pinned him with her gaze. "If you're going to be my guardian, I _need_ you to be my guardian. I need you to be someone I can talk to about stuff." And, after everything with Caroline... "I need _someone_ to talk to." Elena looked incredibly tired all of a sudden.

* * *

"You've been avoiding me."

Alaric nearly jumps out of his skin when the words are said lowly in his ear. His hand reflexively tightens on his car door handle, other hand reaching into his coat to pull out his army surplus knife, but then the voice registers and he sighs. Turning around slowly hails Damon, street lighting casting shadows on his face, and a small smile on his lips.

"I haven't been avoiding you," he sighs and leans back against the truck.

"You know how I feel about lying, Ric," the other man chides and Alaric shifts.

"I'm not," he lies through his teeth. "I've just been busy."

"With what?"

"I don't know, stuff. I've been busy with stuff. I have lesson plans to put together-"

Damon lets out a sharp laugh. "You don't teach-"

"-and Jeremy's been freaking out about something-"

"He can handle himself-"

"And Elena..." Alaric waits for some smart-alec comment, but nothing comes.

"What about Elena?"

Another shift. "She's going through things. I'm just helping her like I said I would." He looks out into the parking lot of the Grill and watches two drunken college students stumble out laughing uproariously. He doesn't need to look back at his best friend to see that those light blue eyes are narrowed in suspicion.

"You're still mad about that whole killing you thing aren't you?"

Alaric rolls his eyes and looks back to Damon. "No, I'm not. I told I wasn't. I've just-"

"Been busy. With Elena. Right."

Uneasiness creeps through his veins. "Damon-"

In a flash, the vampire is right in his space. Not close enough for thier chests to touch, but close enough for breath to mingle. "You know Ric - I'm starting to think there's something going on at the Gilbert house."

"What? Man, what are you-"

"What I'm talking about is you give the evil eye every time I'm over there, grow some hair on your chest whenever I look at her, and called me out at a fucking Lockwood Potluck in front of everyone. I'm starting to suspect those rumors are true."

Alaric's mind is stuck - this conversation is going nowhere that he expected it to. The truth bursts forward before he can stop it. "Elena doesn't want me to talk to you." It's so absurd, it's juvenile and Alaric cringes. "I mean- she thinks that I'm taking your side all the time. I'm just trying to show her I'm not."  
Damon blinks. "You're not talking to me because Elena doesn't want you to?"

And yeah, he realizes how bad that sounds. "No. Damon-" Alaric steps back and runs a palm over his face. "I promised her that I would be on her side-"

"And since when was I not on her side. I got choked out by Klaus for her. I went to fucking Tennessee." Alaric doesn't say anything. What can he say - it's a hard argument to rebut. "You know what? Fine." Damon throws up his hands and turns to walk away.

He's halfway across the parking lot before Alaric calls out to him. "Damon!"

"Screw you, Ric." He doesn't stop walking, doesn't even turn his head to say it. He's disappeared into the darkness for a long while before Alaric sighs and gets into his truck.

* * *

"Hello Elena."

Elena gasps. Her heart is pounding against her chest and she wishes it was shock that prompts the reaction, rather than yearning.

She hasn't seen him since the potluck.

Alaric's question from a little over a week ago echoes in her head. _"Do you know what you're doing?"_  
She wishes she didn't feel these things but, after the pushes from Caroline, she can't simply pretend she doesn't see these feelings for him anymore, just because they're inconvenient to have.

"Hey Damon..." She looks away from him, as though she's not completely aware of exactly where he is in her room. It takes a conscious command from her brain to relax her shoulders as she half turns. "What are you doing here?"  
"What, no, 'I've missed you, Damon'? Or even, 'I've been thinking of another plan to save Stefan!'" His falsetto is incredibly false and doesn't go towards mimicking her at all.

Elena licks her lips, and does her best to focus on his words, not the sexy thrill of the purr in his tone. "We're not doing that anymore," she says, before peeking a glance at him. "Remember?"

"Oh. Right." His eyes are narrowing, and the peek at this tells Elena that she needs to be careful. "And now you've got no use for me anymore, is that it?"

"It's not like that."

Just like that, Damon is suddenly standing right over her. Her temperature goes through the roof, her eyes dart around, desperately trying to find something that will work as a distraction. For some stupid reason, she feels like crying, just from the nervous energy surging in her.

"I think it's exactly like that." Damon's voice is a low growl. "Convince me it's not, Elena."

One. Two. Three. Elena takes that many slow, not even nearly calm, breaths, before daring to look at him again. "If you don't know, you're going to have to convince yourself. I don't know how to do that."

He doesn't touch her, but his invasion of her space plays havoc on her. Her body hardly seems to know the difference.

"If we aren't playing 'friends' anymore, I'd appreciate it if you didn't turn anyone else away from me."

He's gone before she can look at him, before she can even try to tell him otherwise. The movement of her curtains on the still day are the only evidence that Damon was so recently there.

Elena looks as though she's been crying when Alaric comes home, and Ric can't help but wonder if she's had a surprise 140 year old vampire visit in the time that it took him to drive back to the Gilbert house (of Pain), or if she's been crying over Stefan again.

Neither of them talk for a while, instead choosing to move around each other in a sort of dance that's equally good as a metaphor for the conversational subjects they dance around.

* * *

"What did you do?"

"Nice to see you too, Ric. Whiskey?"

Alaric ignores Damon's question, following him into the boarding house and shutting the door behind him. "What did you do to Elena? She's been upset for days."

"I didn't do anything," Damon scoffs, pouring himself a drink and taking a sip. "If I did anything she'd be more than upset."

"Then what did you say?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Alaric bites his inner lip, hard enough to almost draw blood. Damon takes another sip of his brandy, eyes sparkling over the rim as he watches Alaric struggle. "Okay, fine." He sets the tumbler down. "All I said was if she didn't want me around to just tell me."

Ric looks at him incredulously. "That's all you said?"

"I may have thrown in something about Stefan never coming back, or for her to lay off scaring away the only friend I have in this godforsaken town."

Picks up his tumbler and takes another sip. "I can't be entirely sure though."

He feels like grabbing at his hair. "One, why-" he stops, tries again. "Why did you even mention Stefan?" Damon shrugs but he ignores him. "And two-" And he doesn't know how to say this one either without it creeping into Lifetime Movie territory. He looks off to the side, to the fireplace, at his feet, before the frustration finally bubbles over. "She's not scaring me away."

"Oh, whatever Alaric. What do you call," and he pitches his voice high and whiny, a not so off imitation of Elena in distress " 'don't talk to Damon, Alaric. Be on my side Alaric - Damon is crazy.'" He scowls and tips the rest of his drink back before pouring another.

"For fuck's sake, it wasn't like that."

"Sure could have fooled me." the vampire grumbles.

"Just- shut up." Alaric sighs. Damon tries to hide his version of a murderous pout behind the tumbler. "Alright, since you fucking need to hear it - I'm not going anywhere." He throws his hands out wide and cannot even fucking believe he is doing this - having a heart to heart with Damon Salvatore. This is the most messed up Disney, afterschool special shit he's ever had to do in his life. "You killed my wife, turned her into a vampire, lied about it, have endangered my life more times than I can count, lie to me, get me drunk when you know I'm trying to get sober, and you fucking killed me a week ago. And I'm still here. So... do what you want with that."

The silence after his min rant settles around them, heavy and uncomfortable. The seconds tick by. And then-  
"Oh, Ric," and his tone is mockingly sweet, "I didn't know you cared."

"Just... shut up." He walks over and pours himself a drink. The expensive stuff.

* * *

"Are you sure you're ok with this?"

Elena has expressed her intention to seek out Damon again. After the last time, Alaric is half tempted to try torefuse him entry into the house, but he knows he can't do that without actually becoming all the things both Damon and Elena have informed him its not flattering to see him being. But damned if he's going to let her face this on her own.

"I can't have him thinking I only kept him around to get Stefan back," Elena says. With her eyes, she pleads him towards understanding. "You didn't see him."

 _Wanna bet?_ Alaric thinks.

"Besides," Elena continues, "we're the only ones who haven't pushed him away."

 _Because he excels at leading people to do that,_ Alaric thinks. _The ones he doesn't leave for dead anyway._

But he can't keep his thoughts dark. He likes the guy, after all. He just wished Damon didn't go out of his way to make him look like a bad role model.

"Oh, and that doesn't have anything to do with the way you see yourself," Damon had rejoined halfway through their last drinking session.

Alaric hadn't had a reply to that.

And he didn't have much of a reply to give now. It was all he could do to keep from glowering as Damon walked into the Gilbert house now as if he owned it.

* * *

Staring at Damon from across the kitchen counter, Alaric realizes how weird it is being on this side. Literally, on this side of the counter - usually it's him on one side, while Elena and Damon are in their own little world on the other. But now, he stands next to Elena while Damon stares at them, waiting for one of them to get on with the point, and Alaric decides he doesn't like it. He doesn't feel right. Now that he and Damon are back on good terms, it doesn't seem like the best time to gang up on him.

Which, yeah, he knows Elena says that she just wants Damon to know she's not trying to keep him around as a substitute and that she's not trying to turn him into Stefan, but the truth is, she is. On both accounts. And he gives this conversation five minutes tops before it's spiraling out of control.

He doesn't want to be standing next to either of them for that.

Slowly he angles himself to the left, so that he has on side of the counter all to himself.

"What?" Damon demands of both of them. His eyes flick over to Alaric's who turns his own eyes onto the stove. Real smooth.

"Just-" Elena begins, looking as if she doesn't know where to begin. "The other night - when you... killed Ric-"  
"We've gotten over that," Damon says carelessly.

Elena's face tightens slightly. "Well, thats good. Just... that night you said that I was trying to change you. And you were right." She sighs. "I was trying to- I don't know. Forcing myself to see you differently... to see the good in you."

"And now you're saying you realized you were wrong?"

Alaric winces, hoping she doesn't fall into the trap.

"Yeah."

Alaric squeezes his eyes shut.

"Thanks, Elena."

"What? No, I meant-"

"You meant that you were trying to find the good in me, couldn't and realized I'm the monster I've been telling you I was all along."

"Damon-"

"You are a piece of work-"

"What I meant was that I know the good is there. You have a dark side, all of us do, but we can hide it-"  
"What if I don't want to hide it? Ever thought about that Elena?"

Alaric opens his eyes and his eyes flick over to Damon. When he sees the expression on his friend's face, he allows their steadily rising voices to fade out for a moment. He's just had a realization - it's not one that should surprise him. It's been in the back of his mind for almost as long as he's known the other man - it's why they get along so well. Damon is complicated - that's not the revelation. That's obvious. The revelation is Damon is so complicated that he's not complicated. His mind is most likely a tangle of insanity, the reason why he's a loose cannon and quick to snap, but if you just... leave him alone enough...

That's the thing with Elena, Alaric things as he absently watches her hand waving in the air while Damon spits what looks like acerbic words in her direction. She's so stubborn, always pushing, has these romantic ideals that Stefan only fulfilled because he was hiding his true self the whole time. It was easy to be what Elena wanted him to be because he was looking for a disguise anyway. Damon is the opposite - doesn't want to hide who he is, doesn't appreciate anyone who wants him to.

The sounds of their yelling filters back in slowly.

"-always so difficult, Take everything I say and twist it around-"

"-okay, princess-"

"Stop." Both of their voices break off abruptly, and they look over to him - they look as if they've both forgotten he was even there. Suddenly he's so tired. "Damon, stop killing people," he talks over Damon's attempt at a response. "If not to spare other lives, just to spare your life. I'm not sure Carol will tolerate anymore 'unexplained deaths.' She's going to start digging and she will find out it's you." He turns to Elena. "And Elena stop trying so hard to see the good in Damon. Just see it. It's there. Right in front of you." Nobody says anything for a long while. "I'm going back upstairs."

When he leaves the kitchen, they both haven't said a word.

* * *

Silence fills the gap left by Alaric's absence. Elena looks wide eyed, although she too noticed Alaric's not so subtle separation from her. early on in the conversation. Her face is pale.

Damon's jaw is tight.

Elena opens her mouth several times in the attempt to say something in response to Alaric's parting words but, if glib was the right mood, she knows Damon would have taken that path already. Her mouth closes several times, once for each time she realised she doesn't know what to say.

Abruptly Damon pushes himself away from the table.

"Right, its clear you can't even do that." His eyes are flashing but he doesn't attempt any intimidation, doesn't press closer from his side of the table. It seems like he can't even look at her anymore.

"Damon, no!" Elena is the one who sharply closes the distance between them, finding words to say to him suddenly. His eyes, when he turns them down to her, are cold. Just how cold takes her breath away momentarily, but she pushes forward. "Damon, that's not fair. You may be a vampire, but I'm not. I don't think like a vampire. I need..." He's shaking his head, and Stefan's name floats on the air for a second. "Time," Elena finishes firmly.  
Damon blinks. "Time," he repeats. Elena's mule headed expression starts to form. A tick moves in his jaw, before he says, "I suppose me not killing anyone else for stress relief would help during this... time."

Elena nods her head stiffly, but there is a small gleam in his eye. "That would help."

A tense silence follows.

Eventually, Damon gives his own short nod. It is the first real truce between them, possibly the most honest truce, thanks to Alaric's frustrated outburst.

Upstairs, Alaric waits for the inevitable yelling, followed by the slamming door, but neither of those come.

* * *

Alright, so maybe he's not the easiest guy to get along with. He's never been like Stefan - wait; that's a lie. He tried to be like Stefan once, and this is where it got him.

When they used to be alive, Stefan was the one that everyone loved. He was younger, cheekier, bolder. Polite with a wicked edge that was just this side of charming. Damon was just nice. He was nice, utterly polite, considered himself witty. But it didn't matter - everyone's eyes slid over him to rest onto his brother. Time after time - his father, the girls in town, Katherine...

And then he was murdered and realized he could never die, and he realized it was time to re-invent himself.  
Isn't it always supposed to be the younger brother who looked up to the older? He did it wrong - he always does it wrong; this time around, Damon let himself, his real self, be hidden under what he thought everyone wanted - that bad boy with the charm, but he couldn't get right. But it stuck. It stuck, because turns out it's easier to cope with others not enjoying your company when you convince yourself you don't care. It's downright effortless to remember you could kill anyone that threatened to bring those insecurities up with one wrong look or a few wrong words.

So yeah, he's not the easiest person to get along with - doesn't mean Elena has to rub the fact in his face every damn chance she gets. He doesn't need her reminding him that he can't get the damn thing right. He tries, it's not enough, and he kills - kills someone else because he can't find it in himself to hurt her and the whole damn cycle starts all over again.

He takes a sip of his drink and stares into the fire, listening to Alaric climb the stairs outside, and enter through the front door without knocking. His friend doesn't say anything as he fixes himself a scotch on the rocks and settles down on the couch next to him.

 _Just see it. It's there. Right in front of you._

"You okay?"

 _It's there. Right in front of you._

"Fine, Ric."

They both clink their ice against their glasses. Alaric leans further into the seat and sighs.

 _Right in front of you._

* * *

She wasn't alone in the house. Jeremy was in his room but, when she'd gone in there for company, he'd been all evasive and like she'd interrupted a conversation. A conversation with someone she couldn't see in the room with him. Right.

That left her feeling pretty alone in the house. Was she really that hard to be around? Even Alaric had rounded on her when it came to it.

She hadn't thought she was being unreasonable. She knew that, when Damon had been human, he didn't need to be compelled to forget or agree with whatever Katherine was doing. Surely he didn't expect that kind of blind faith from her. She wouldn't be her anymore if...

Elena lifted her hand to where her necklace used to rest. Damon could have compelled her in the kitchen downstairs. Had he realised that? Had he even thought of that?

How did she really know he hadn't?

She hated herself for that thought almost as quick as it hit.

Was she fooling herself? When Stefan was here, she'd let herself be convinced by Damon as Stefan saw him. But, it had become plain that Stefan was not even Stefan as she'd seen him.

Was she being unreasonable?

Time. She'd asked for time and Damon had agreed to that. So, perhaps she didn't need to figure out all of her 'Damon problems' tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Damon stops killing (Alaric) people, Alaric becomes the new Stefan, and things get just a little less gen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uuuh, we continued writing it.

"So..."

Alaric sighs silently and keeps quiet. But Elena's gaze doesn't wander, and those big brown eyes become disconcerting after a while. "Sooo, what?"

"Have you, uh, spoken to Damon lately." And it takes all of his might not to roll his eyes, or get up and walk away. Instead he shifts on his stool at the counter top.

"I have."

Silence. "Has he said anything?"

"He says a lot of things," he snorts. "A lot of which isn't worth repeating."

"C'mon, Ric. You know what I mean."

And he does know what she means - has Damon said anything to him about her. The truth is he doesn't - nothing but the passing crack about her not trying to off herself today by some crazy ill-planned out scheme. But he can tell his friend is thinking about it - whatever it was he and Elena discussed when he's taken himself upstairs and out of the conversation. Damon is more silent and broody than ever - normally Alaric wouldn't mind, but he's broods by himself enough to not want to watch someone else do it.

"No," he finally answers, truthfully. "He hasn't said anything."

"Oh."

* * *

"He hasn't..."

Elena looks at herself and wonders when she suddenly started sucking so hard at this conversation thing. There is no tactful way of asking this question, and so she avoids Alaric's eyes instead.

"Goodnight, Ric."

She wishes for a time when things were easier. Times with Stefan weren't necessarily *easier*, but she had someone to share the hard times with. More than the person, she misses having that. Too much, lately, it feels like Alaric has fallen down on the side of Damon, without giving as much of a fair hearing to her side of things. She doesn't like this feeling. It doesn't sit well with her.

"Elena."

His soft speaking of her name has more than a bit of compassion in it. He's tried to ignore the hurt in her tone. It hasn't worked. When Elena turns, she's standing near the stairs, and she sees a softness in his eyes that she hadn't expected. This isn't her school teacher, he hasn't been for a long time. But he's not exactly her guardian either. Ric treats her differently to the way he treats Jeremy, though she's pretty sure that's an attempt of recognising the differences in their ages.

"He hasn't killed anybody." Alaric shrugs, as though these words aren't a huge weight off his shoulders too, and a huge reason why he's been coming down so much on the side of Damon lately. "Not since you talked. Not for fun, not for food."

Elena's lips part. She nods. She knows what this means. The rest is implied.

Damon's been giving her the time she said she needed.

That night, Elena looks to her window and wishes that she didn't pine so much for someone who wasn't coming through it.

After a time, it becomes pretty obvious that she's going to have to go to him.

* * *

A spike of what feels like disappointment flashes through Damon's stomach when he pulls open the door to Elena standing there. It's not so strange - he was expecting Alaric; plus he knows that whatever reason Elena is here for won't be his favorite. It hits him again just how stressed she makes him and thanks whatever deity up there that he's already dead and can't develop high blood pressure.

"A pleasure,"he greets her sarcastically and steps aside to let her in. There's a brief hesitation, no doubt caused by hus caustic tone. He sighs. "C'mon," Damon says, voice a little softer.

He closes the door behind her and soon they're staring at each other, the only sound the ticking clock in the foyer.

* * *

It's different now. Being here. Elena lifts her head in the direction of Stefan's bedroom, automatically. When she met Damon's gaze again, he's glaring at her watchfully.

It's like Stefan was always this buffer between them. Now that he's gone, they have only each other to react to. Elena has to admit that this hasn't been going very well. Stefan was a good peacemaker, when he wasn't ripping out the throats of village girls. He had mediated well her and Damon's strong personalities.

"To what do I owe..." He roll his eyes and waves a hand back and forth. You should know how this sentence runs by now, and so on.

"I miss you."

She makes the statement as bald and as frank as she can. Deliberately, she keeps herself still as he takes his time to react. At first, his eyes narrow.

"Miss being here, you mean."

"No."

Another pause. Like he's trying to figure out the game beneath her words.

"Well, come on in," he says, while he is trying to figure it out.

The comment is redundant, being as how she's already in the foyer. Elena lets only the smallest smiles lift her lips in acknowledgement of his being flustered enough to make such a statement.

"Thank you. How are you?"

Katherine would have crowed her victory. Elena won't.

* * *

"We have got to stop meeting like this. Although, that would mean you would stop being liquored up and I prefer you loose and pliant."

Alaric rolls his eyes as Damon settles down on the bar stool next to him. He waits until he's ordered his usual bourbon and as the waitress walks away the inevitable question comes. "I thought you were trying to quit."

"How can you think that when you got me a whiskey worth thousands of dollars?"

"It was a test. You failed."

Alaric doesn't say anything, just takes a healthy measure of his drink, relishing the way it burns the back of his throat.

"Elena came to see me yesterday. Said she misses me." If this were a month ago, Alaric is sure Damon would have been out joy killing from happiness. But now the vampire is hunched over the tumbler the waitress just dropped off looking anything but elated.

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"Sure."He drinks down half the contents in one gulp, nose wrinkling at the burn. The sounds of the people in the background mingle with the juke box and out of the corner of his eye sees Matt Donovan heading to the back room.

So, what did you tell her?"

"I told her that was peachy."

Alaric sets his glass down. "Dude, seriously, I don't get you. One minute you are all over her and the next you couldn't care less. Or you care so much it makes you angry? I don't know. I really don't, but you need to make up your mind-"

"Like how she just made up hers?" Damon says, almost snarls, and Alaric stares. "Maybe I'm just sick and tired of her making up her mind and expecting everyone to just fall in line." He takes a deep breath through his nose and turns to stare at the pictures on the wall behind the bar. He swallows down the last of his drink and calls for another.

With nothing else to say, they revert back to silence, broken only when they ask the waitress to leave the whole bottle.

* * *

"She's an 18 year old girl."

Alaric breaks the silence eventually, and Damon closes his eyes in a grimace at his best friend's words. When he opens them, it's to stare steadily at the half full glass sitting in his hand. He can already see himself needing the next one.

"Think of what you were like at 18."

Damon does. His memory brings up an unsavoury parallel between he and Elena, and he and his father. Between he and Elena, and he and Stefan. He's been so busy too and froing, to the army, to the workforce, to this perspective wife that Father thought was appropriate to...

By the time Katherine had stepped into their lives, Damon had been just primed for being fucked around.

All at 18.

But he had known what he wanted. He wanted Katherine. He _knew_ that. It had defined him for over 100 years. How could he not know that he had wanted Katherine.

But... the niggling thought crossed his mind and, once it did, Damon couldn't do much to get rid of it. But... had he wanted Katherine at the start, or had he wanted Katherine out of a wish for attention from Father, and Stefan?

Alaric doesn't say anything, doesn't really even look at Damon, leaving him instead to his introspection. Damon had almost 130 years on him, he figured that would mean some time needed for introspecting.

Without warning, Damon downs the rest of his drink.

"Let's just say," he starts, staring steadily at the counter in front of him. "I'm _not_ saying, but let's just say _if_ , I was indecisive at 18... I grew out of it."

Alaric nods. "And Elena will too. Once she's had time to get over her aunt's death, her boyfriend's defection to the dark side, her own near death, her doppelganger trying to ruin her life...." Alaric just sort of lets the end of that sentence go into the wayside. His point is pretty clear.

Doesn't mean Damon has to like it. He pulls a face and looks Alaric up and down, squinting. Alaric's eyes are deceptively clear. "When did you get so smart, Ric?" the vampire asks the younger human man.

Alaric gives a cute little dip of his head. "Who do you think was the indecisive 18 year old who helped me get past the initial crushing blow of Jenna?"

* * *

"Don't worry, Elena. He'll come around."

Alaric gives her a light pat on the shoulder as he moves past her to get to the fridge. Inwardly, he's grateful when the teenage question asking him 'how he knows' never comes.

"Thank you," is all she says. Right then, she doesn't look too hopeful, but the gratitude in her voice is genuine.

She heaves a great sigh, shakes her head and, as Alaric turns around from the fridge, she's staring wistfully out the window. He slants a glance out beyond the window, but it doesn't seem as though she's actually looking out at anyone, so much as staring out into the distance. One can never tell in this town. He cracks open a soda, and the sound hisses through the kitchen.

"I need to get out of here, Ric. In a real serious way."

From the way she says it, Alaric doesn't mistake she means the house for one second. He feels very cautious in how to proceed on this subject.

"O-of course," he starts, with only a little stumble over the first syllable.

"I mean, there's nothing here for me anymore, is there?"

Alaric knows that Elena is talking about Damon. Or maybe Stefan. She's definitely not talking about the man who has never quite managed to make the distance between high school teacher and guardian and who ended up being more confidant, or friend. He ducks his head.

"I think there's plenty here for you," he says. "Bonnie, Matt and Caroline. Caroline more than anyone needs you to stay around. And Jeremy... he's lost so many people already."

Elena turns her gaze from the window to him. There's a sad smile on her lips, and Alaric frowns in the face of it.

"What, you don't count yourself among those here for me, Ric?" She says the words teasingly, but they shallowly mask a deeper, more genuine wish to hear it from him.

Alaric's jaw works. He understands that here, this manner of turn of her phrase, this is what drives Damon so crazy about Elena that he keeps trying to push her away.

But maybe Alaric's been teaching high school too long. In any case, he gets it. Gets where this comes from. Maybe it's because she lost her mother young. Maybe it's because she's a still teenage girl, if on the upper end of it. All the phrasing of her words show is that she's a young woman with insecurities.

"Of course I do." He moves across the kitchen to give her a hug. He's hugged her before, many times, in comfort, or just after times when she's almost managed to get herself killed. They've done it a lot more since Jenna's been gone, almost as though they are the two adults of the Gilbert residence. Which, Alaric supposes, they are.

There seems nothing strange about this embrace, until Elena lifts her head to make some other comment to him, and then stops. Her lips part, causing Alaric's gaze drift from hers to lower, to her lips.

"Elena..." He's not sure if he's trying to push her away, or trying to articulate something else. He knows what he should be articulating...

His single word seems to break whatever spell descended upon them for a moment. She shakes her head, giving a brief and embarrassed smile.

"I'm sorry, Ric. I shouldn't... I'm just... I'm sorry.." She lifts a hand to her forehead and turns away to break eye and physical contact with him completely.

Alaric tries to release a big burst of breath as silently as he can in the now quiet kitchen. "It's okay," he says, trying to reassure Elena, or himself, or both of them.

* * *

Ric is acting weird. Damon swills his hospital bag blood in his tumbler as he scrutinizes the other man sitting on his couch. To the untrained eye, Alaric is calm, leaning back into the supple leather of the couch, foot resting on his knee as he sips his decidedly blood free drink. But Damon is a hunter,a predator - has been for over a hundred years, so smelling distress as easily as a passerby smells the dough from a bakery. His best friend's foot shakes in quick, static beats, stopping suddenly whenever he realizes what he's doing. The fingers around the glass are a little too sweaty and he won't meet Damon's eyes for more than a few moments at a time.

"Are you going to spit it out or am I going to have to Compel you?" he says casually, taking a small pleasure in the way Alaric's fingers tighten even more around the glass.

"What?"

"You've been acting like I'm going to snap your neck again ever since you opened the door." He swallows down the rest of the thick, coppery liquid before going to pour some more.

"You might want to take it easy with that," Ric says. "It's the last bag I have in the cooler and I'm not eager to have too many blood bags hanging around my apartment."

Damon doesn't mention that he doesn't have to keep blood in his apartment at all - he recognizes the sentiment for what it is. "Stop trying to change the subject. Why are you fidgeting like a school girl who's caught sight of Stefan?"

"Man, I'm fine. I'm just tired."

"Why are we at your apartment anyway? Troubles at Casa de Gilbert?"

Damon is sure he doesn't imagine the way Alaric's heartbeat picks up at the question. "No, I just needed a little time away from my dead girlfriend's house. Besides I figured you wouldn't want to be around Elena right now, considering."

"Yeah, you are so considerate." He knows his best friend is lying about something and it has to do with Elena. "I can just Compel you."

"Then no matter how much expensive liquor you buy me, we're done."

"I can just Compel you to forget."

Alaric finally looks into his face, expression tight. "Do it." And it's a challenge. And Alaric knows how Damon is when he's being challenged.

They stare at each other for long moments, seconds ticking by, unblinking. Damon takes in Ric's weary, wary expression, light brown hair fly away and face scruffy. His jaw ticks, teeth clenching, bracing himself for Damon's mind tricks and it hits him then that he's tired of people looking at him like that. Or at least Ric.

He looks away and despite Ric's warnings drains the rest of the blood into the glass. He knows the next time he comes here there will be more.

* * *

Days pass. Elena only realises that Alaric hasn't really been around when Jeremy mentions something about it. Up till then, she's too busy trying not thinking about what almost happened in the kitchen to feel anything but dull relief at Alaric's absence.

"Huh. I wonder where Alaric's been."

Elena's head darts up at that. "What?"

Jeremy shrugs. He's on his way to work. He always seems to be on his way somewhere these days. Even Bonnie says she hasn't been seeing all that much of him since she came back. "Alaric. He hasn't been around since..." He goes to count the days on his fingers, but it ends up in another shrug. "Just hope he's okay."

Not a vain hope in a town like Mystic Falls.

It gets Elena thinking. Grabbing her phone. Dialling Alaric's number.

Her heart crashes against her chest in relief when she hears his voice, missing completely the wary edge of his tone. "Elena?"

"Oh, thank god you're alright!"

"Of course I'm alright. What made you think I wasn't?"

"Gee, Ric." All of a sudden, all of Elena's nervous energy turns to upset. "I don't know. You're the guardian of two people now, and you haven't checked in in days. Added to that this town has a high mortality rate, I don't know why I'd worry. _Glad_ you're okay, Ric." The tone of her voice at the end is sharp, and indicates that she is anything but.

She hangs up her mobile before he can reply.

* * *

Alaric snaps his phone shut and groans. He lets his head fall with a thunk onto the sticky wooden counter top of the bar. The sounds of the Grill fade as he considers Elena's angry words. She's right. She's right - he left them, left her, right after he said he would do the exact opposite.

He fucked up, he knows that. Knew it all those nights he stayed at his own apartment or sneaks into the house late, staying in his room until he was sure Elena was gone. He just can't take this. If it's not one thing it's the other - homicidal vampires, trying to make sure Damon knows he won't ditch him, crazy ex-students who run off with homicidal vampires, witch rituals, dead bodies piling up in the streets-

It all rushes down on him, swells and crashes and now he's angry. Elena has no right to call him so upset, acting as if she has no fucking idea why. Yeah, okay, he's supposed to be taking care of her, supposed to be the older, more responsible one, but when it comes down to it plain and damn simple he isn't. He tries, but just can't make it work, and she isn't five years old - he isn't some creeper who's hitting on one of his students. She was there to, was an active participant in whatever the hell that was and he's not going to let her play the victim. Get mad at him.

He stands, digs in his pockets, throws some crumpled bills on the bar top and leaves.

* * *

She hears the door shut loudly from the kitchen and two seconds later Ric is there, hair tousled from the strong winds outside. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes glint. "Don't call me and snap at me like that."

"What else was I supposed to do? You left-"

"I didn't leave, I just needed some time for myself."

"Away from me."

"Away from all of this. Damnit, Elena. Everything," he sets his palms face down on the kitchen island and takes a deep breath. "Everything is insane and I don't know how to handle it. Neither of us do, none of us have any idea what we're doing. And to add..." he trails off, the moment they had the other day hovering between them. "...to add whatever that was, is, to it... it wouldn't be good."

The kitchen is quiet for a few moments as he stares down at the marble beneath his fingers. He doesn't move as her fingers move slowly over to cover his own - her skin is warm. Warm and alive, and he can smell the flowers from her shampoo she's standing so close.

"Ric," she says softly, and he looks up into her big brown eyes. "Just don't leave again. I can't... lose... anybody else. I just can't" The hurt in her voice is what breaks him - makes his heart splinter, because she's just a young woman trying to hold onto everything she can because it all gets torn away from her.

He moves slowly, partly because he feels as if he moves too quickly he'll spook her, but mostly because everything about this is wrongwrongwrong, but as he cups the side of her face with his palm he can't find it in himself to stop.

It's not really a kiss - just a press of lips. A promise that he's made before, but is sealed with this gesture. Her hand squeezes his own tightly as her body leans into his, and he kisses her harder for a moment before pulling away.

Even as she smiles at him, small and delicate, eyes a little watery, Alaric knows none of this is going to end well.

* * *

They both want... they both want _something_ so much. Whether it's their previous partners, or just something to take the loneliness, or actually just each other, this isn't the time for either of them to get carried away. Least of all in the open curtained living room of the Gilbert house.

They end up sitting on two different sides of the couch, talking.

"I was angry at myself, too. Angry I hadn't noticed how long you'd been away by myself, angry I hadn't come to you sooner to talk about... to talk. Jeremy said something about you being gone and I felt like I was such a bad person for... and I'm so _sick_ of feeling like the bad person, Ric. Seems like nothing I can do is right since my parents died." She breaks off, because she's had three sets of parents, and she's had to bury three sets of parents. She breaks off, as if Alaric doesn't already know all of this himself, and all he wants to do is reach out to her, say something gentle.

But she needs to get this out.

She isn't going to cry. She feels heavy, hot tears behind her eyes, but she won't let them fall. God, the last thing she needs right now is Ric thinking that she's crying to get his sympathy right now!

Steel works its way into her spine and she grits her teeth to say, "That's been a long time now. And I'm not a kid. What happened with us... it happened. We should be able to talk about it."

Alaric takes a deep shuddering breath. "I dunno, Elena. I don't want to be the thing that gets in the middle of... whatever you and Damon feel. You said yourself you don't know what you're doing."

Elena snorts. "I don't!" she says. "I don't think even he knows. Sometimes, I don't think he even _likes_ me any more."

"And that's not the most important bit," Alaric says, because saying anything else _would_ put him in the middle of what she and Damon feel. "Elena, I'm a teacher in this town. I'm one of _your_ teachers. Teachers just don't go kissing their female students, especially not ones they're living with."

Elena's jaw tightens, and she nods because he's right. It's not just a matter of age. If it was, then the century and a half that Damon and Stefan had on both of them could be put into the conversation and render Alaric's age irrelevant. But it's a matter of Alaric's position in Mystic Falls.

"I know," she says very softly. "I know." It both sums everything up, and solves nothing.

* * *

Alright, so- yeah, Caroline talked to Elena about the whole Alaric thing already. But as Caroline stands at the kitchen island in the Gilbert house she realies that Elena never really gave an answer. And usually, she would dismiss the whole insane notion that Elena would be involved with a teacher (maybe old Elena would fantasize about it, jokingly) but she watches Elena and Alaric move around each other, Caroline contemplates the situation.

To be honest, none of them are in the best mental states right now - Tyler is a werewolf, she's a vampire who's father tried to torture it out of her, Jeremy can see dead people, Bonnie is stressed out of her mind, Stefan is being let lose on the world by a sociopath, and Damon has always been insane. And Elena has been in the middle of all of this from the very beginning, and was sucked dry right before Stefan ran off to kill all the townsfolk. And to top it all off Alaric's mourning his dead girlfriend, so yeah- in retrospect, it's not that hard to believe these two are involved.

Because Caroline knows that something is going on.

She has a sixth sense about these kind of things; like that one time in ninth grade when she knew Kate Masterson and Tony King were hooking up and no one believed her until they got caught in the janitors closet. She knows when two people are hooking or at least want to, and Ric and Elena fall into at least one of those categories.

The way they strain to be causal with each other, voices a little too light, a little too carefree. They way they make sure to keep a safe distance between their chests and how they're careful to not even let their fingers brush. Yeah, it's suspicious, creates tension that's almost palpable, fuzzy lines in the air that pull and pull until they'll snap and everything goes to hell.

Well, it's either they're going to snap or Damon will find out and kill them both.

Either way, she thinks as she smiles back at Elena as she sets a cup of tea in front of her. It's all going to go to hell.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens after the events of 'The Reckoning'.

It's just after Stefan and Klaus came back into town. Either Alaric, Damon or Caroline have had Elena in their sights at all times since then. At first, Damon didn't know whether the downsides of changing the house into Alaric's name and thereby being able to keep Stefan out--thereby earning his almost certain wrath--with outweigh the good but, so far, Stefan has pretty much kept his distance from Elena. He seems to be doing exactly what he said; keeping her under protection. Or, rather, allowing Alaric, Damon and Caroline to do the same.

It's just before Caroline picks Elena up to go to school that Elena walks up behind Alaric. He doesn't tense, but only because he's forcing his body not to. When he turns to face her, he has a ready smile on his face.

"Can we..." Elena takes a deep breath, like what she's about to ask is going to be completely reckless, and Alaric has learned to be wary of Elena's reckless spirit. "Just go for a ride after school today? Away from everything? Just for like, half an hour or something?"

Had it not been for the fact that every single one of those statements came out as a question, Alaric thinks he might have been able to refuse her. But he needs to get away as much as she does, so he nods his head, says, "Sure."

Caroline brings Elena home from school. Alaric's already there, having had the last period without teaching today. At a seemingly knowing look from Caroline, Alaric quirks his head but Caroline, just being Caroline, says only, "Your turn, Alaric."

He doesn't want to ask Elena if he should be thinking there's any alternate meaning to Caroline's words.

There's nothing going on. There's nothing.

Elena smiles at him. Says, "Just let me put down my bag," and then they're ready to go. Elena is grinning and laughing before the second red light; Alaric can see it from the rearview mirrors on either side of the bike. This is what he wants for her. This is the change he wants to see.

It's not the first time he's caught himself thinking... wondering... after she graduates this year...

They're out of town by the time they stop. Elena pulls her helmet off and it's like she's breathing in the air in their little space away from everything in order to live. Alaric pulls his phone out of his pocket, mostly to give himself the excuse to look away from her. Five missed calls. All of them from Damon.

With a movement of trepidation, Alaric readies to return these calls.

"Sorry, Elena. I have to take this."

She nods, not in the least bit disturbed.

Alaric takes a deep breath as he returns Damon's calls, knowing the man well enough to know five calls means he's about to be facing an emotional break-down that's probably going to bring around an early end to this short escape from life.

Damon answers on the first ring.

"Elena." Damon gasps the name out, stark and frustrated. He doesn't even wait for the social convention of waiting for Alaric to speak 'Hello' first. "She's gone. I can't find her anywhere. She's..."

"Here." Alaric cuts in dryly, glad at least to be able to clear this up. "Obviously you weren't too worried about me or you would have noticed I was gone, nowhere to be seen, too."

There is a silence on the other end of the phone that stretches out uncomfortably long.

Then, "What are you doing out there alone with her, Ric?"

Alaric feels a buffet of cold go through him. He's going to pick up on the thing I was keeping from him, he thinks over and over again, before getting a somewhat shaky grip.

"For Christ's sake, Damon. I'm her guardian! Put your jealousy issues aside."

* * *

"Who said anything about jealousy?"

"Whatever, Damon. I know what's going through your mind. You always-" But what he's about to say is unsaid when he feels Elena wrap her arms around him from behind.

"C'mon," she says into the soft leather of his jacket. "Lets go into the fields." Her hands slide down his stomach and she takes the hand not holding onto the phone, tangling their fingers together. "We can watch the sun set - it'll be something beautiful to see for once." His brain stutters for a moment, a moment too long because Damon is speaking again, voice hard.  
"And you wonder why I sound a little irate."

"Damon-" the line goes dead and he pulls the phone away from his ear to see that the call has ended. He sighs and sticks the phone back in his pocket.

"What did Damon want?" Elena seems unconcerned, and Alaric wants to keep it that way.

"Uh, nothing. He just wanted to know if I'd seen you."

She hums and tugs on his hand, and even though he's sure he's trespassing on someone's property, steps over the low wooden fence with her to head into the sea of wheat to sit and watch the sky.

He'll worry about Damon when they get back to Mystic Falls. Right now, he just wants to keep that serene look on Elena's face for as long as he possibly can. She deserves it.

* * *

They have the conversation with Damon at the Gilbert house. Largely because Damon is there playing some video game with Jeremy when they get back.

His controller is left abandoned on the couch as Damon speeds up to meet Elena and Alaric the minute they get in.

"Hey!" argues Jeremy from behind them, as he proceeds to get beaten up by AI opponents, without anyone to back him up.

"And where have you two been, hmm?" Damon's lips are thin, and his eyebrows are raised.

Alaric just huffs out a breath and turns away, which isn't an answer, not really.

"Could we not have this conversation here?" Elena asks, keeping her voice hushed. The last thing she wants is for some sort of demented lover's quarrel to break out in front of Jeremy.

Damon looks like he's about to say something. Then something holds him back, and he nods.

"Your room?" he asks.

"Where else?" Elena asks. It's not like Damon has had a habit of creeping up into any of the other upstairs bedrooms here. At least this time he'll be invited.

It doesn't take long for an argument, born largely of Damon's worry and upset, to begin and then escalate.

"She's fine, alright, Damon? Nothing happened. She was fine the whole time." This from Alaric.

"Yeah. And, I mean, it's not even as if we thought you'd notice. You act as if you're just short of hating me half the time!" From Elena.

Damon glares at Alaric, but he would have glared a lot longer but for Elena's sentence.

"Of _course_ I don't hate you!" Damons eyes are just about going wild.

Alaric is standing behind Elena, arms crossed over his chest, looking as though he's the calm one in the room. He's not.  
Damon barely spares him a glance as he says to Elena, "If I hated everyone I was annoyed at..."

Elena and Alaric both just snort.

Damon opens his mouth. Closes it again. Opens it. "I have friends," he says. " _Other_ than you two. There's Liz. And Carol. I'm at least half sure she doesn't want to stake me anymore."

Alaric clears his throat. It's going to come out at some point that he's on the council with Damon and these women, but he's been waiting for the 'right time' to drop that little bomb.

After a quick glance to Alaric, Damon seems to realise he's moved from the original point he wanted to make.

"Elena," he says, pinning her with his gaze. "I don't hate you. I wouldn't still be here if I did." No way of making that any clearer.

"Well, uh, this clearly no longer involves me," Alaric says abruptly.

Elena's face, which had gone soft with pleasure over Damon's admission, suddenly tenses and she spins to face Alaric as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Damon's brows lift, and promptly lower.

"No, Ric, you don't have to..." Elena's voice drifts away, and Damon realises she is looking at him.

 _Click_ , something goes in his brain. And, oh, you have got to be kidding. Damon knows this expression like he knows his own face. He's played second fiddle in this game for the past year to his brother.

But... Alaric? Even as Damon thinks this, he realises he doesn't actually... mind so much with Alaric.

Then Alaric's eyes lift to meet Damon's and, for that moment, Damon's eyes widen even as Alaric's narrow.

It can't be. Damon's misreading something. Alaric is the only father figure Elena has left now. It's just that Damon is so used to sharing the limelight with someone else for Elena's affections that now he's looking for it.

"Come, Ric. We're all friends. You don't have to leave." In the name of not being a jealous potential-boyfriend to Elena--and this is the closest he's gotten to anything like that with Elena, so he's not going to be the one to stuff it up if he has any say about it--Damon does his best to put two of his favourite people at ease.

Elena relaxes immediately and Damon smirks, before turning to face Alaric. He hesitates a moment, before giving a stiff nod.

There now, Damon thinks. That wasn't so hard.


	4. The first thing that changed in their relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alaric's agreement that he and Elena can "look after each other" heads their relationship in a completely different direction. Spoilers up to and including 3.16 "One Ring to Kill Them All".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one kind of got out of control. I wish that someone would make an animated .gif of the Elena/Alaric hug near the end of this episode. I've loved this ship all season, but I've struggled to find a way to make it convincing until I wrote this.

"Gonna head to bed in a few."

"Hey, listen, Elena. The, uh, the Sherriff told me about everything you did today. And while I appreciate it, I don't want you getting in trouble because of me, okay?"

Elena turns from the Gilbert journal she's reading in the living room couch. It was such a relief to see Alaric home an hour or so ago. He went upstairs to have a shower, while she said goodbye to Matt and thanked him for coming over, and Elena just knew that she had taken a few more of those steps in that amorphous direction of growing up today. She'd taken care of Ric when Ric hadn't been able to take care of himself and, if breaking and entering into another person's house was an unusual way of getting that done, it could be put down to the quirkiness of this town they lived in that Elena had been put to such lengths. 

She thought, when Alaric held her after coming back, that that was his recognition of what she had stepped up and done for him today. The house was quieter without Jeremy in it these days. It was harder to keep up those official labels of 'guardian' and 'ward'. Especially when Elena was 18, and had seen and gone through all the things that she had. 

Seeing him coming downstairs now, Elena isn't so sure at all that Alaric has read anything into her actions today at all. 

"If not for you," she turns to ask him. "For who?"

It's a valid question. Stefan and Damon had never accepted her help, even though she'd been more than willing to give it on so many occasions. For them, she was firmly placed in this 'breakable' box, needing to be protected at all times, with or without the aid of Klaus' compulsion, and there wasn't a damned thing that Elena could do about it.

But there was something she could do about it here. She would be damned before she allowed Alaric to place her in that box too. 

"Well still, I... I'm the one who's supposed to look after you." He gives a self-deprecating chuckle. "Even if I suck at it."

Elena offers a small smile. The very fact that he 'sucked at it' is further proof to her that their current situation didn't work. "Okay well, how about we agree to look after each other then?"

The look Alaric gives her turns her heart over. It's an unguarded moment, the likes of which Elena hasn't often seen without a couple of glasses of scotch between them. That she's seeing it now means something. She doesn't know what, but she smiles, hoping there is as much that is unguarded in her expression to offer him in return.

When he accedes to her request, it's not with gentle mockery, but with a quiet acknowledgement that he knows she can do exactly what she's said. "Deal."

That is the first thing to changed in their relationship.

*

The second thing that changes is due to an accident out of the shower. True, Alaric had once fronted up on the landing wearing only a box of Chunky Monkey when he'd first started staying nights at the Gilbert residence but, back then, Alaric had been with Jenna, and Elena had been with Stefan. 

Neither of those is the case when Alaric opens the door to the bathroom and finds Elena standing there in front of the mirror. With wet hair. And a towel hanging on the rack behind her. 

Alaric spins away fast, but not fast enough not to gain an eyeful of Elena. "Oh! I thought you wouldn't have gotten home from school yet!"

"I had an afternoon period off!" 

Elena doesn't know where to look, where to stand. She supposes she needs to get out of the bathroom as fast as possible as it's patently clear that the towel is not going to cover her enough now that they've run into each other in this way. 

"I'm going to..." Alaric makes hand gestures in the direction of the hallway, and rushes out in the direction of the stairs. 

Elena just tries to get her breathing straight, then has to do it all over again when she notices that Alaric has glanced up in the direction of the bathroom as he's headed back downstairs. 

She scrunches her eyes up tight and wishes, not for the first time, that it hadn't felt so necessary to send Jeremy away. It's just the first time that she's happened to think it for _this_ reason. 

*

Dinner around the dining room table is awkward that night. They sit together at the dining room table to eat because the couch in front of the TV is too intimate but eating separately will be too much like admitting that something has gone horribly wrong between them. And nothing has. Nothing more than a little bit of embarrassment on both sides that will pass in a short period of time. That's not the worrying part.

The worrying part is the way that Elena felt when she was getting dressed in her room, pulling on underwear and thinking of the way Alaric's face flushed when she caught him looking again as he walked downstairs. The first shock of him seeing her naked passed too fast for any impressions to be made, but the fact that he had looked again...

Elena doesn't know what to make of that so, instead, she asks Alaric to pass the peas.

Alaric notices the next time Elena is in class that she goes back to calling him 'Alaric', not simply 'Ric'. He realises that the reason why he hasn't noticed this before is because she hasn't called him anything, not since that time by the shower. God knows Alaric has done his best to wipe the visual memory of the young woman--his _ward's_ \--young and flawless form from the backs of his eyelids, but he knows he shouldn't have looked back up at her as he was hurrying away. He knew that at the time, he just didn't know what prompted him.

He doesn't know how to tackle this with Elena, so he just asks her to hand in her weekly assignment.

*

Meredith's presence in their lives and in their house reminds them that this isn't the biggest problem that they've got going for them right now. The thought that he could be blacking out and committing these heinous murders is the most awful thing that has happened to him since he woke up to be told that Klaus had been walking around in his body for the last few weeks. He didn't think that anything would ever be that devastating again.

"Is it safe here..." Alaric clears his throat, and tries to keep his eyes set on Meredith, which is always more difficult when Elena is in the room. "Is it safe here, for Elena I mean, with me...?"

Meredith looks at Elena and misses all the underlying reasons why such a question could be asked. Elena doesn't miss any of it. Alaric sees the way that her eyes darken, and she stares at him until he's the one to look away, ashamed. He feels like he has so many reasons to be ashamed. 

"I don't think Elena is in any danger," Meredith says eventually. "She's one of the founding families, but she isn't on the council. But we can take precautions..."

" _I_ can take precautions," Elena informs them both, and Alaric wonders where she found all that steel she puts in her spine.

Alaric shouldn't have been surprised when Elena took him up on that later on in the night. Elena was planning it virtually from the point when she saw that Alaric was trying to find a reason to leave her house.

"What about looking after each other?" she demands.

Alaric is in the process of taking his belt off before bed, but he stops immediately as soon as Elena confronts him. He stares at her for a while, then ducks his head.

"Feel free to keep looking after me," he says, without looking at her. "This is me looking after you."

"This is you running away," Elena tells him. She steps into Jeremy's room, which has become Alaric's room simply because it's the best of the bad options. "I thought that not talking about what happened in the bathroom would be better for making the awkwardness go away faster, but that doesn't seem to be happening."

Alaric's got nothing to say to that. There is nothing to say. 

"Alaric... There's nothing wrong with the fact that you walked in on me. People who live with each other do that sort of thing all the time."

"Do you know you stopped calling me 'Ric'?" It's not a sentence Alaric expected to hear himself say. It's certainly not the first sentence he expected to say on this subject. But there it is. "You stopped calling me 'Ric' after I walked in on you in the bathroom."

He watches as Elena opens her mouth, then closes it again. "Well, that's not deliberate. Ric." She smiles. "See, just a coincidence."

Alaric finishes pulling off his belt and kicks off his shoes. Then he looks up, and notices how Elena's eyes have watched the motions. Particularly around his waist area.

He licks his lips. A sentence from the journal Meredith and Elena had him read jumps out at him. _I don't feel like myself anymore._ Alaric doesn't think it's the ring doing this, getting this reaction out of him, but what other reason is there for the fact that he's crossing the room towards Elena and he can't stop himself from doing it. 

Elena only moves to lift her head to face the taller man. "Ric?" is all she says, before he dips his head and presses his lips against hers.

It's only for a heartbeat. Alaric fullheartedly expects to be slapped when he pulls himself away from her. "That was..." he shakes his head, wincing in advance.

But Elena's features are flushed, and there is this expression of ecstatic wonder on her face as her eyes slowly open. Her lips are still slightly parted, and Alaric can't help but take them again. 

This time, he lifts his hand to cup her jaw, and steps in closer to her so that their bodies are touching from their hips to her shoulders. The kiss lasts much longer than a heartbeat this time, and Alaric's drinking it in, drinking every moment of her in, waiting for the moment when she comes back to her senses, and pushes him away, and tells him to get out of her house.

None of these things happen. Alaric's heart is pumping harder than he remembers it happening for anything other than fighting against vampires who are bigger, faster and stronger than him. Elena's lips look well kissed at this point, and both of them are very flushed.

"Uh..." Alaric starts. He turns his head to the side, where the belt and shoes that started this are haphhazardly placed on the floor of Jeremy's room. "So... that shouldn't have happened."

He figures it's best to start this thing, but he's unprepared for the anger that rises up in Elena and is directed, full force, at him. 

She doesn't say anything, though. For a moment, Elena's eyes are livid. The features softened by forbidden kisses harden, and the flush takes on a different nature. But he recieves none of her ire. Instead, Elena turns sharply on her heel and exits Jeremy's room. A minute later, Alaric hears Elena's door slam behind her.

*

She can't believe this has happened. She just can't believe it. She feels like such a fool, like she was the one standing there and wanting it to happen while he... 

Surely anything is a better first thing to say after you kiss someone than, "So... that shouldn't have happened." Elena doesn't know how she's going to be able to face him in the morning. 

She doesn't know how she's going to stop thinking about it. If it was that hard to think of anything else after he merely looked at her while walking downstairs, what's it going to be like now? 

*

Damon's mobile gets two text messages in the space of around 10 minutes. Alaric's is first.

_I could really use a drink. You in?_

He's pulling on his boots, ready to meet Alaric at the Mystic Grill, when Elena's message arrives. 

_Something's happened. Where are you?_

Damon tips his head to the side while considering this second message. Ric's was easy to reply to. A simple, _Yes. Grill_ had been enough to both confirm and plan. Ric would arrive in the next 10 to 15, and they could drown their sorrows over the latest shitty thing that this town had dealt out to them.

He would have thought it was to do with being tossed in jail and sprung back out again, but that had been several days ago now. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be behind an urgent message for drinking today. 

Coupled with Elena's message, probably from the same house...

Damon thinks for only a moment, before sending, _At the Grill. Join me there?_ Then he drops his phone in his pocket, grabs his jacket from the coat rack, and whistles under his breath as he closes the front door behind him. 

*

They are coming from the same place, so it probably isn't a surprise that Elena and Alaric walked into each other on their way to the Mystic Grill. Elena sees him first, but not soon enough that she can prepare the reaction she wants to have in front of him for the first time post-kiss. 

Alaric is similarly underprepared. "What are you doing here?"

Elena lifts her brows. "I'm not allowed to be out here?"

Alaric frowns. "I didn't mean I'm keeping you under curfew..."

"Good." Elena's voice is clipped. "Because you can't really get away with that kind of thing after tonight."

Alaric looks so crestfallen at this responce that Elena almost takes it back. 

"Ahh," says a familiar voice from behind them. "My two favourite people."

Both of them spin around to face Damon, who gives them his best thin lipped grin as he tries to read the subtext behind the actual text he has just overheard.

"Going my way?" he asks.

Alaric takes a step towards him. "What are you playing at here, Damon?" He slants a gaze across at Elena, looking away again almost before his eyes fall upon her.

She is standing behind him, arms crossed over her chest and looking no more happily at Damon.

Damon, of course, maintains the very picture of innocence. "Hey, don't blame me for whatever lover's spat's gone on here." As the heartbeats of both of the people in front of him suddenly shift, Damon's face goes slack in shock for an instant before he can recover. " _No._ "

"No," Elena shuts down firmly, and Alaric is just glad that Elena can't see the facial expression that he pulls after that. Damon can, though. Damon watches with interest as Alaric's eyes close and he looks like he's just been struck.

"Uh _huh_ ," is all Damon has to bring to the conversation. He walks towards Alaric. "Come on, party guys. Something tells me this is not a conversation you want to have in front of the whole of the Mystic Grill."

"I was just... I forgot something." Alaric calls himself a fool for involving Damon. Of course _Damon_ was the one Elena went to after the kiss. He looks at him closely for a moment, but sees no sign that Elena has told him yet about the kiss. He's sure to hear about it when she does. The expected slaps will be nothing in comparison to the swipe he expects Damon to take. He feels like a complete and utter hypocrit, warning Damon off in the past. "You guys go on. I'll catch up with you later, Damon." 

"You know where to find us," Damon says easily, but his eyes are too watchful. Alaric looks away, and then feels that he's given Damon even more information. "Sure we can't change your mind?"

Elena doesn't know what to feel. She expected that calling Damon would make her feel better, would give her a distraction from Alaric. Now, Damon is intricably linked to thoughts of Alaric. How could she not have thought that Alaric would go to Damon too? 

"I'll get that thing you forgot," Elena says, offering the peace branch. She sees the surprise in his face and tries not to make anything of it. "I'm kinda tired now anyway. Apparently all I needed was a walk before bed."

Alaric opens his mouth to reply, but it is Damon's retort that gets in there first.

" _Guys._ " He says only that, but suddenly Alaric and Elena are both looking at him. "I'm not stupid. I've been around for 150 years, and you two have been living alone together in a house for several weeks now." Damon's eyebrows lift, as though to say whatever had happened between them was already a foregone conclusion based on their situation. 

Elena stays still, really interested to hear what Alaric has to say about this. He was so eager to run away from Elena. She doesn't think he'll find it as easy to run from both Elena and Damon. Of course, she rejects the thoughts that Alaric wasn't the only one doing the running. 

"It's not like that," Alaric says roughly. He raises his ring, talking to it rather than to either Elena or Damon. "This ring changes you. The number of times I've escaped death now... it shouldn't be any surprise that there's a penalty."

Damon is watching Alaric very carefully. Memories of Samantha Gilbert came to mind, but he didn't want to interrupt Alaric.

Elena's not thinking that far ahead at all. "You think it's because of your _ring_ that you kissed me?" She has at least the sense to say the sentence with quiet incredulity. The look of hurt on her face might be one of the reasons for it. "Ric, that ring causes you to black out, to kill. Did you black out on me back there, cause you certainly didn't kill me."

"I didn't black out," Alaric admits, though he looks hardly able to face Elena with the admission and memory of it.

Damon decides it's time for another one of his pertinent comments again. "Ric. She doesn't look that upset. You're a good looking older man."

" _Older_ being the emphasis," Alaric hisses out. He doesn't seem to have any of the same troubles of meeting Damon's gaze. But, if Alaric thinks he's going to have an easy ride to guilt city on this one, he's got another think coming. 

Damon turns to Elena. "And you're upset. Are you upset that he kissed you, or that he went to talk to me about it immediately after?"

Elena's lips parted. She looked between the two men. "That's about the crudest way you could have put it, Damon," she reproaches him.

"Answer the question," Damon says, skating a glance towards Alaric just to make sure he's paying attention. 

Elena takes a deep breath in. "I'm upset because he left. Because he said that it shouldn't have happened."

"Because it _shouldn't_ have." Alaric looks wild eyed, as though he can't understand how he's the only one who sees he's done something wrong here. "Look, Damon, we can't all look to be in our early 20s and dating high school girls. I'm Elena's _guardian_."

"And I'm 18, Ric." Elena steps forward so that he would stop looking at damned Damon. "You said yourself that means I'm old enough to take care of myself now."

"Girl's got a point, Ric." It wasn't like Damon hadn't done his best to talk Alaric out of having _that_ particular conversation. It had, of course, gone as fruitlessly as Damon had supposed.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to do now," Elena continues. She peers into him, willing him to actually see her as a person, not someone he needed to feel guilty for feeling attracted to. "Did you mean what you said?" she finishes, softer now, so that Alaric has to strain to hear her speak.

"Yes," Alaric answers heavily. "I just never..." Just never thought it would backfire so spectacularly, he finishes silently.

Elena waits none too patiently for the end of his sentence, but Alaric doesn't supply it. She looks to Damon. "Thanks," she says sincerely. "You've really helped us out."

"What are friends for?" he says, with that grim little smile. "Go on, Ric," he says quietly. "Be with your girl."

Of all the things that Damon has said tonight, Alaric thinks this is the one that hits him hardest. Not until this point is he able to put aside his thoughts on how forbidden Elena is to him enough to think of how much this conversation would have caused Damon.

"Damon..." he starts, but Damon lifts up a finger, and tilts it from side to side.

"None of that now," Damon says, his eyes flashing also to Elena as she too picks up the stake Damon had in this conversation, and runs her mind back to the things he said anyway. "Run along home, kids," Damon finishes, but his eyes are steel as he says it.

It's strange walking away from Damon on that note, but neither of them have vampire senses enough to stay aware of him for very long. Soon enough, the biggest awareness becomes the big gap between the two of them. Neither of them try to close it with something so innocent and sweet as hand holding. Neither of the two of them are innocent or sweet. 

Alaric unlocks the door to the Gilbert house, but then waits like a gentleman for Elena to enter into the house first. 

"Thanks," she murmurs, suddenly shy in the moment. For all her strong words out on the street in front of Damon, she's coming to suspect that she's never been with a man like Alaric before. 

"You're welcome," Alaric says. 

Elena hesitates, and then starts walking up the stairs. If all fails, she thinks, at least she can get undressed in the bathroom. It's not like he's never seen her naked before. And, if he doesn't follow her in there, there's an adjoining door between there and Jeremy's bedroom.

It doesn't come to that. Once they are on top of the landing, Alaric takes it as the time to reach out to hold Elena's hand. She looks down at the contact between them, then looks up at him with shining, hopeful eyes. 

"I just want you to know..." Alaric starts slowly. "All the things that make me a bad guardian make me just as bad as a boyfriend. I drink too much, I stay up too late, I run around the town making friends with vampires and making enemies of vampires I then have to kill. Hardly the most dependable type for a boyfriend."

Elena's heart leaps the first time he says the word 'boyfriend', so much so that she hardly registers any of the words Alaric says after that. From the tone of his voice, though, she gets most of the gist. 

"I'm a big girl," she says. "How about we take it just as it comes?"

Alaric nods his head a couple of times. "Let's do that," he says.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt says, "Once you fall in love with someone, I don't know if you can ever shake them," and Elena's world explodes as she realises what this means with regards to her and Damon. Spoilers up to and including 3.16 "One Ring to Kill Them All".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Aiden Hawken -- The Argument.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yGRK_5-iV8)
> 
>  
> 
> This is the song that plays during Matt and Elena's conversation in the series, and what I was listening to almost the whole time I was writing this. I wish I could embed it, but apparently I can't.

"It's like I knew that he would never stop loving me. Like he would never... die."

Elena's heart drops as she hears herself say this. She attempts the words a second time, in the attempt of making them sound more real.

"Like he would never die."

She's been coming to terms for a while now that, while still so fond of Stefan--who isn't fond of their first love?--she's already fallen out of love with him. They had their time, and it was so wonderful, so important to her just getting through the days back then. But it's over now. If Stefan stopped drinking blood today, she wouldn't go back with him. Couldn't. And that was one of the things that made seeing him like he was tonight so hard. That made hearing the words on Wickery Bridge when he sounded so sure that he'd already lost her. He was right. He had managed to heal her, to make her well again after the death of her parents, while he... he was worse off than ever before.

And there was exactly nothing she could do to save him.

Matt is the one with the question. "And Damon?"

"Damon just... sorta snuck up on me." She tries a laugh to lighten what she thinks is coming. What else was there to expect? Bonnie had taken a go at her and Damon, Caroline and Alaric had both made their opinions known. At least her conversation with Alaric had prepared her for the one with Caroline. 'I don't know' would never have been an answer that Caroline would have accepted in regards to what she was doing where Damon was concerned.

And so it seemed that tonight it was time to have the same conversation with Matt. He'd stood in line and he'd waited his turn. And maybe he'd been the one to step up last because he was the one who was the ex-boyfriend, the one who had the vested interest in whoever she chose to date now. Elena knew he still wasn't settled with whatever was going on between Caroline and Tyler.

"He got under my skin and no matter what I do I just... can't shake him." She's not even looking at him now, can't quite make herself face whatever expression is filling Matt's face. Repulsion, she thinks, is the most likely of them. She's telling the truth now, just like telling Caroline that she couldn't be with Damon--cause what would that make her?--had been true at the time. Just like she'd told Alaric she had no idea what she was doing with Damon before that. Her heart is beating fast in her chest, so fast that it feels like Matt should be able to see the flutter of it beneath the skin above her tank top.

Matt's not looking at her, though. He's looking off into space, like he's trying to come to terms with some sort of concept, and then find the ability to put it into words. 

He does, though, saying the one thing she truly never expected. "Once you fall in love with someone, I don't know if..."

And, just like that, everything stops. Elena heart feels like her heart shudders to a stop, as though all the breath in her body has been pushed out in one violent jerk. She can't breathe, she can barely look at Matt. 

"I don't know if you can ever shake them."

He looks at her expectantly after that, and it's all Elena can do just to keep acting normal after he's finished talking, to act as though he hasn't completely--inadvertantly--shattered her world. Pining glances across the room, whimsical fantasies, won't help anyone anymore. She has fought this as long as she could, and she has lost. Because she knows that, now it's been said out loud, she can't take her reaction back. She can't pretend she didn't feel what she felt when Matt said those words. She can't help the longing to see Damon, to get him to tell her his feelings again. Can't help the shudder of self-revulsion that follows. She has to say something, anything, to get the conversation flowing again after that. Something, anything, to get that expression off Matt's face when he realises that his words have triggered something in her that was unexpected to them both.

And then she's relieved beyond words when Alaric walks back into the house, because wondering what it makes her if she ends up with Damon is now the least of her worries. 

*

Her realisation hopelessly changes everything in the dynamic between her and Damon. The next time she sees him is when he's walking into the Mystic Grill. She's sitting there nursing a drink and waiting for Matt to have his break. When Damon and Stefan walk by, she immediately stands up to greet them, then stops herself. The movement doesn't escape Damon's quick eyes and, for a moment, there's an almost questioning expression in them. Then it's gone, like Damon remembers that they are going back to the status quo of a year ago, whether he has to drag them all there himself or not. 

Problem is, a year ago is about as far from what Elena wants as anything gets. As she watches Damon and Stefan, she notes that the older brother is simply taking the things he wants out of the year they both came back to Mystic Falls. The desire to make her hate him. The desire to see her and Stefan back together, one assumes, to assauage the guilt that he'll completely deny now that he's feeling. 

But there are things that aren't the same. None of them have seen Katherine in months, though of course she must be around. More importantly, Damon is holding Stefan's hand around town. Oh, not literally. Even Damon wouldn't make such an attention seeking gesture and, if he did, Stefan would almost certainly never have it. But they are buddying up, working together. Damon is helping Stefan, helping him like Elena always thought she would be doing herself, before she realised that her love for him was like a child's love, and one she'd accidentally outgrown. 

That cements the thought in her head. She's not going to just sit here and wait for one of them to make a move, or wait for Matt to have his break. She walks across the bar to speak to the two brothers because, after everything they've all been through together, there should be no weirdness in her standing beside them.

Mostly, there's narrowed eyes and provocative comments, for all the world as if it was Damon feeding from a woman in the street that she and Matt had come across. Elena can't help the habit that has her glancing at Stefan for support, and finding none.

"I'm not interested in rising to the bait, Damon," Elena answers, and the dynamic has changed between them all whether she likes it or not. It couldn't have come at a worse time. Elena wonders what would have changed if she had had her great revelation before she had told Damon that maybe his feelings were the problem. She hadn't seen any evidence of them since, nor any evidence that they would be coming back. 

Damon sneers, and says, "Such a pity." He turns away, but Stefan is watching very carefully. Even through everything that has changed about the man she used to love, he is still the observant of the two brothers. He sees something in her eyes before Elena can hide it away. She ducks her head, but it's too late. Stefan, of all people, knows what it looks like when Elena has love, and pain, shining from her eyes.

"I've got to go," she says, and she hopes that Matt's willing to take his break outside of the Grill, because that's what the plan is now. 

"I thought you weren't rising to the bait?" Damon starts, but Elena hears his softer, "What?" which she can only assume means that Stefan has said something to him.

She's horrified. Mortified. The heat stoves used to cook the burgers at the Mystic Grill have nothing on Elena's face. She thinks that the only thing worse than feeling this way is having Damon become aware of it, and then deciding to use it against her. She doesn't think she can face that. She saw firsthand what he did to Caroline when she fancied herself having feelings for him right at the start. She knows that he compelled Andrea Starr, and she can see herself becoming just one in a long list of women who fell for Damon Salvatore and just stopped living. Even Rose hadn't long outlived Damon's attentions.

And then, she realises, this is what Damon has lived through every day since her mother outed Damon's feelings.... and Elena didn't return them. Sure, her romantic attentions haven't led to dead bodies yet, but the number of people dead in the persuit of her safety just keeps on rising. 

She thinks through every time that she has used the information of Damon's feelings for her to get him to do something he wouldn't ordinarily do, to come around to something she wanted him to do just because it would be more convenient to her. What was that if not taking away someone's will? Sure, she hadn't compelled him with a vampire power, but something about her had compelled him just the same.

Damon runs out of the Mystic Grill as though being chased. His eyes widen as he sees Elena loitering just outside, but there is nothing Damon can do to hide the urgency that had pressed him out of the Grill. He tries it anyway, crossing his arms and leaning against the brick wall beside the entrance. His eyes reflect that he knows both of them see it as a lie. 

"Thought you were leaving," he murmurs.

Elena shrugs, glancing back towards the inside of the Grill. "I'm just... waiting for Matt."

Damon nods. Looks away. Elena watches the muscles in his jaw work. "Look. I didn't mean for you to see that stuff with Stefan the other night." It sounds like the words are being forcibly pulled from his mouth. He stares steadily at the ground between them. "It's not like I staged it elaborately for you."

"I know that." But it was good to hear. Elena swallows. "What _were_ you doing?"

Damon looks up, obviously surprised at the question. "I'm trying to help him. Help him see drinking blood as not an all or nothing scenario." His jaw flexes again, and he shakes his head, before looking back down to the ground. "He's got a problem and, until he can deal with it..."

"What?" Elena prompted, daring to take one step towards him. "What do you see happening when you cure him of being a Ripper?"

"You can be together agian." Damon's eyes are of the clearest blue as they pierce through her so cleanly that Elena's not even sure she feels the wound immediately. "Like both of you want to be."

Elena shudders out a breath that she fears might end up being a desperate laugh if she doesn't contain it. "You think you know what I want."

Damon's eyes sharpen further in shock. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that, don't think you know so much about what I want." Elena shakes her head. "You clearly have no idea."

"Do I..." Damon frowns. His eyes deliberately observe that the distance between them that has been minimised by Elena, but he makes no movement himself. "Several months of seeing you moon over my brother... I think I have a pretty good idea of it by now."

Elena just presses her lips together. Then nods. "Then I guess we don't have anything else to talk about."

Damon pushes away from the brick wall and Elena thinks he's about to make something of it, when he says only, "I guess we don't." He turns back towards the Mystic Grill, letting the door slam shut behind him. 

Elena exhales shakily. Then she thinks to pull out her phone. No missed messages or phone calls from Matt. Maybe he just didn't get a break this evening. Strange, it didn't look that busy in there.

*

"I'm sorry, Elena. Stefan just wouldn't let me go outside to see you. Said you and Damon had something you needed to talk about? I didn't really want to go up against Stefan after what we saw the other night." Matt's voice is clearly apologetic over the phone. He only pauses a second, before he asks, "Is everything alright with you and Damon?"

Elena just closes her eyes and leans against the kitchen wall at her place. "No, everything's fine. And I'm not upset."

There's a pause, before Matt says, " _Did_ you and Damon have something you needed to talk about?"

"There was some talking," Elena says evasively, pulling away from the kitchen wall. "I'm not sure why Stefan made such a big deal of it, though."

"Uh _huh_." Matt doesn't say anything explicitly, but Elena knows him well enough to know the kind of expression he's pulling right now. She decides it's better to pretend she doesn't.

"Anyway, raincheck?" Elena offers, more to change the subject than anything else. "When are you next working at the Grill?"

*

_Come by the boarding house. Now._

Nothing more than that. And Elena jolts when she sees the name STEFAN appear on her phone. It's only then that she realises just how long it's been since she received a message from her ex-boyfriend. 

Instead of jumping to it, like she once would have, Elena just looks at the text message for a long time, examining the feelings she has. Is this an attempt by Stefan to get her back? Elena is surprised by the visceral reaction she has against that. She closes her eyes, merely holding the phone in her hand for a moment, without looking at the message. If Stefan wants her back, she's going to have to be strong, be kind, but be clear that everything Stefan said was true. He has already lost her. 

She opens her eyes, then considers the message again. What if it isn't a message for Stefan's sake? What would she say if Stefan was inviting her over because Damon wouldn't? Would she object to Stefan trying to set her and Damon up as much as she objected to Damon doing the same? It was pretty damned weird to think of the hypothetical. With Matt, she felt strange just talking about the Salvatore brothers, and they hadn't gone out for years now. For Stefan to try to arrange things between Elena and his brother? 

And yet, stranger things have come and gone through Elena's life recently. The hope she feels at the off chance she's right answers her question neatly, but goes nowhere in telling her how to handle Stefan's text.

There is a third possibility. Klaus was still in town. He'd been quiet for a while, but that was the exception, not the rule. Elena knew better than most people in this town just how quickly and thoroughly he could go from barely there to turning a person's life upsidedown. 

And so she sends back the only reply she really can. _Why?_

She can almost hear the exasperated sigh from Stefan at the recieval of his return message. It's a kind of sigh that wasn't included in the earlier model of Stefan and, in Elena's opinion, isn't really an improvement.

_I'll tell you when you're here._

_How do I know this isn't a trap?_

_Would Damon let you walk into a trap?_

_Damon's not the one texting me right now._

There's a pause in their bevy of texts. Then, Stefan's reply vibrates in Elena's hand, _And that's really the problem right now, isn't it?_

Elena feels short of breath. It's the only verbal confirmation that Elena has had that Stefan really did observe the feelings plainly written on Elena's face the other night. Another message comes through shortly after, without Elena's need to reply to the first one. _Come over to the boarding house. I promise you'll like what you see._

Elena doesn't know what to do. It seems foolish to just go over, and yet cowardly if she doesn't. She wants to text Damon, to make sure he's there, or make sure he knows that Stefan's invited her over, but that seems dumb as well. Maybe, if they were close like they had been before Stefan came back into town... But they 're not. And that's mostly Elena's fault. Pretty much only Elena's fault.

If she's going to be able to do anything about that, she's going to have to take some action. Any action is better than no action right now, and Elena doesn't relish the alternative of sitting around in her bedroom, wondering what those text messages were about.

*

She arrives into the boarding house tenuously after standing at the front door for long moments and wondering whether or not she should knock. She supposes, technically, this house was still in her name. It seems foolish, after everything, to stop and knock at this door. She's hardly done it since the first few times she came to this house.

But she seriously considers it now. 

In the end, she feels like catching Stefan unawares, or at least less aware, may be the best thing, and so she opens the front door and strides into the living area.

Stefan is nowhere to be seen. Damon, however, is lounged over the whole of one of the couches, reading a book. 

He stands up and is three feet away from her as soon as he registers the sound of her footsteps near the front door. 

"What are you doing here?" he demands, looking her up and down hungrily, before taking a step back. Elena watches as that horrible mask of hate and distance rise up in his eyes.

"Stefan said..." Elena heart shatters as the mask is completed at the use of Stefan's name. 

"Stefan." His brother's name is accompanied by a mocking smirk on Damon's lips. "I'm afraid little brother isn't in right now." His eyes flashed. "Are you sure he gave you the right address?"

"Yes," Elena says distractedly. "Damon, I..."

Damon lifts his chin. "Uh uh, it must be such a disappointment to be greeted by the wrong brother. Let me think, what can I do to make this up to you?" 

He gives a devilish wink that causes Elena's traitorous heart to leap because it's one of the first ways about him that charmed its way into her heart. Even though she knows he's using it as a front right now, Elena can't help but be drawn in. 

"Scotch or bourbon," he offers, sauntering the first few steps in the direction of their bar, and then speeding the rest of the way over. "Since, legally, you're allowed to drink on your own property now." He gives her his infamous eyebrow wiggle. "Though I wouldn't let that stop you if you weren't."

"Damon... stop." Elena takes the distance between herself and the bar more slowly, out of necessity but also out of a hope that she can somehow turn this conversation around. She tries not to wear too much of her heart in her eyes as, right now, she simply doesn't trust that Damon won't just turn around and throw it in her face. She wonders how much he's been drinking--human and alcohol--and how long he's been left alone. Looking out for his brother is one thing, but Damon needs people who help his restraint around him. Elena knows that Damon hasn't seen much of Alaric since Ric was released from jail and found out he might actually be a killer. 

Damon looks back at her with somewhat glazed eyes. "Still not having fun? Hmm." Abandoning the alcohol glasses--or, rather, hers. His goes down the hatch before being slammed back down on the bar behind him--Damon walks with a little gig across to the stereo. "Maybe a little music to loosen us up? I know that worked with Vicky..."

They both know how that worked with Vicky and, this time, Elena's not able to hide the horror that enters her face over the fact that Damon could use the memory of Matt's sister like that.

When she looks at him again, his facade has shifted back a couple of steps, almost like Damon himself can't believe he just brought that up. Then he blinks, and Elena sees him start to steel up his resolve.

"Damon, stop." Elena's entreaty sounds stronger to her ears this time. She speaks up before he can do or say anything that they're both going to hate him for later. "I know what you're doing."

Damon gives her a crooked smile but, for a blessing, he doesn't say anything. 

Elena dares to take another couple of steps towards him and towards the stereo. In reality, she feels more like she's walking towards a wild animal than towards the man she has fallen in love with. In Damon's case, both descriptions are true. 

"I know you're trying to make me hate you so that me and Stefan get back together again," she says. "It's not going to work."

For the first time, honest surprise enters Damon's gaze, only to be blinked away. "I know that he's done some pretty messed up shit, Elena, but you've forgiven him before."

"It's not that I don't forgive him." Now they were coming to the crux of it. Elena made sure to take in deep breaths in the attempt of lowering the heartrate that suddenly started pounding a mile a minute. From the way that Damon's gaze flickers down towards her heart and then back up to her eyes, she knows that she has failed. "I just don't... I don't love Stefan anymore."

"Shh." Damon is very strict. "He may not be home now, but he could walk in at any moment and hear you."

Elena closes her eyes and opens them again. "I'm pretty sure that Stefan already knows." Again, Elena thinks about her gaze that Stefan caught, the way that he held Matt up from catching up with Elena and Damon, the way that he texted her tonight to tell her to come to the boarding house, and then was conspicuously absent. "I'm pretty sure Stefan already knows," she says again.

Damon watches her carefully for a time. Suddenly, he's not looking anywhere near as drunk as he just was. "Then what are you doing here?" he says roughly.

Here it is. The moment they've all been waiting for. Elena steels herself to look steadily into his eyes, takes another one of those much needed breaths, and tries to quickly order her thoughts into the words that she wants to say to Damon, finally.

She doesn't know whether it's because this is a stupid idea, or the fact that it's just taken her so long to say these words, but it is so hard to make them come out. 

Thankfully, Damon is uncharacteristically silent, and patient.

"You told me once to remember what I felt while Stefan was away." Elena starts her admission slowly, like she wants to get every word that she says just right. She can see already that Damon's eyes are closing up, like he's waiting for a trick, or a joke, and doesn't want to get his hopes up. Elena can relate, but Damon's been doing this for longer, so she knows she's the one who has to make this move. "I remember everything I felt while Stefan was away. It feels like it's kind of impossible to forget."

Damon just watches her, cold blue eyes still as the rest of his lithe, almost feline form. Only his jaw gives away his tension. 

He doesn't say anything, so Elena just figures it's still her turn to talk. She doesn't know when she's supposed to stop talking, so she just hopes that Damon will give her some indication of it at some point down this road she seems to be taking. "I know I haven't been... great to you a lot of the time. Sometimes, I haven't even been very good to you. I'm not proud of that. And I'm not excusing it either. But, you need to understand, this wasn't an easy thing to come to come to terms with." And you didn't help with that, Elena thinks, but she doesn't say it. 

Damon shifts from one foot to the other, and his eyes narrow. Elena knows he's still searching for the trick here. She needs to give him a reason to believe it isn't there, and just hopes he doesn't interpret in her words a trick that doesn't exist.

"I know you have very little reason to believe me." It's the hardest thing to do to look at him while he's staring at her like that but she fears that, if she looks away from him now, she'll lose her very last chance to say any of these things and have them heard. "You have no idea how much I've regretted telling you that your feelings were a problem." If he believes only one thing, she wants it to be that. She impresses the importance of it into her tone. "They're not a problem, Damon. They've never been the problem."

Damon's jaw clenches and unclenches. He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then changes his mind. Elena's eyebrows lift.

"Say something, Damon," she entreats. "Something. Anything. What are you thinking right now?"

Damon lowers his head and says with, heavy irony, "Is this that moment when you make me say everything I've already told you before? Because I'm sick of saying those things, Elena. I've said them enough."

"I know!" Elena feels anxiety tighten her throat and tries to keep it under control, lest it undermine her words. She has to get through to him. She just _has_ to. "I'm not asking you to say... those things again. Just let me... let me prove to you that I mean what I say. Don't shut me out, Damon. Please."

Damon remains silent for a long time. So long, that Elena starts to feel despair flooding over her. It's all that she can do just to keep her head above it.

"Tell me again."

Elena looks at Damon in surprise. "What?"

Damon's eyelids flicker, but the rest of him doesn't change. "Tell me again."

Elena's spirit lifts. Her mouth opens, and she hardly knows which thing to say again first. "I love you, Damon. It wasn't deliberate, I didn't mean to. But I just did."

Damon shudders from the first time that Elena speaks her love of him. His head is still lowered, and the look he gives her is one of intensity and the very height of restraint. 

"You don't love Stefan." It's meant to be a statement, but Elena can tell from the slight lift at the end of the sentence that Damon still needs some reassurance.

"I don't love Stefan." Elena shakes her head. "I'm not even sure when it happened. The _last_ thing I want you to do is try to pull us back together again." Her eyes soften, and she knows that it's inconvenient, and it's messy, but it's all she wants. The only thing she wants is him. If they can work that out, they can work the rest out later.

Though he doesn't technically need to breathe, Elena can see his chest rise and fall in belaboured breaths. She can't take her eyes off him, watching every single shift in his eyes as though it's a lifeline that will give her the answers she so desperately needs to know.

Hesitantingly, she makes the first move towards him. He watches her just as carefully as she's watched him, but he doesn't pull back, even when she lifts her hand and entwines her fingers with his.

"I want you," she whispered up at him, hoping he would see the truth of it shining in her eyes as everyone else had, long before she was ready, all the way up till it was almost too late to admit it. Damon peers into her eyes and, whatever he longs to see there, he finds.

"I've only dreamed..." Damon starts, but it's not a sentence he finishes before he sweeps down and claims her lips in a kiss.


	6. Chapter 6

Alaric wanders down to the main living area of the boarding house. He's all loose limbs and forced calm, blunt ends of fists bumping against each other in an obvious display at casualness.

Damon is on the couch. One of his legs rests over the other knee and he has a bourbon in his hand. He looks like he could hold that pose forever, and might, until Alaric says something.

"She's asleep." Another too casual movement, as Alaric lifts a hand in the direction of the bedroom he's just left Elena in. Damon's bedroom. 

It's 2pm, well after Elena's usual bedtime, but early still for two seasoned drinkers as experienced as Damon and Alaric. 

It's well known to both men by now that they share a girlfriend. It's not a surprise to either of them that it's nothing like sharing scotch at the Grill, sharing a kill, hell, even sharing Alaric's late wife, before Damon killed her and turned her into a vampire.

They definitely _don't_ talk about that.

In fact, all of Damon and Alaric's conversations since the latter relationship between Damon and Elena started up have been very skimming-the-surface conversations. Things they talk about include a short list on the reasons for Carol's consternation this week, the latest disagreement between Liz and Caroline--Liz is always in the right, though it's difficult for them to explain why they both find it so easy to dismiss Caroline when she's the exact same age as Elena--any potential vampire activity, any _Stefan_ activity which isn't the same thing. 

Every so often they talk about Klaus, as though to make sure they remember him so he can't surprise them.

Things they don't talk about include what each of them think is best for Elena. It's funny; that used to be a topic that took up large swaths of their drinking hours. Nights were whiled away as the two gentlemen discussed what it would be like to be able to tie Elena up and move her out of danger in a way that wouldn't result in her killing one or both of them after the immediate danger had past. Once or twice, when it hadn't looked like one or both of them were going to walk out of the Klaus problem alive, tying up Elena and getting her out of danger had seemed like the best option.

Tying Elena up has a different connotation now.

They don't talk about Stefan unless Damon brings him up. Even then, Alaric is very careful to keep conversation to do with Stefan on his blood drinking/Ripper habits. Stefan is someone they can talk about in the context of a common foe they may need to restrain. He is not appropriate conversation as a reminder that Damon has never had Elena to himself. Not really. Even Alaric had a couple of weeks before Elena announced her feelings for Damon. Damon didn't have even that. 

They're five weeks into this both-of-them-dating-Elena-Gilbert-thing, and Alaric is still wondering when he's going to get tarred with the same brush as Stefan.

Maybe it's different because Alaric wasn't part of the whole Katherine Saga. Maybe it's different because Alaric isn't Damon's brother. Because, what Alaric is starting to realise is that it _is_ different. He's not worried about losing his drinking partner now. He's just not sure _why_.

Damon breaks his long stillness by bringing his tumbler to his lips. His gaze flickers to the tumbler on the table next to the open bottle of bourbon in an open invitation. Alaric accepts gratefully. 

This isn't the first time both of them have been in the same house since their non-monogamous relationships got started. It is, however, the first night Alaric has put Elena to bed in _Damon's_ bed.

He takes almost the full glass of bourbon into his mouth and swallows before he manages to say the sentence, "That was weird."

As he says this, he sits down heavily, not to close to Damon, on the couch.

Damon, predictably, has a shrug to offer for human squeamishness. "What's weird? We were all sitting around drinking and Elena couldn't hold her liquor." He smirks into his glass. "It's not the first time."

It's 2am, so Damon doesn't receive the full power of an Alaric Glare, but it's a close thing. "You know what I mean," he muttered. "Don't pretend you don't."

Damon opens his lips in a silent--staged--exclamation of surprise. "Ahh. You mean the putting her to bed in _my_ bed."

"That's exactly what I mean."

Just when Alaric thinks that they might be getting down towards a serious conversation on the topic, Damon nods his head, then just gives another shrug. 

Alaric blinks. They've been drinking for several hours, but Alaric was pacing himself for Elena, and Damon is impossible to get _properly_ drunk. Still, they've been drinking long enough to loosen his tongue. "Five weeks isn't a short amount of time for the beginning of a relationship," he murmured. "I don't suppose we're ever going to actually _talk_ about the two of us dating the same girl."

Damon swilled the alcohol around in his glass, then glanced across at his best friend. "What do you want to talk about?" 

Like he didn't know. Alaric's eyelids half covered his eyes. "You know," like it was obvious. But he didn't, actually. For all his going around drinking and killing vampires, Alaric had led a fairly sheltered life. 

At least, until Damon and Elena had come into it. 

He ran a hand through his hair. "That's it. I'm done for the night. I'm going home."

Damon stood before Alaric could do it. "What for?"

"What do you mean, what for?" The look Alaric gave Damon was disgruntled. "I'm drunk, and I'm tired, and you're a poor conversationalist, so I'm going home."

Damon scoffed. "That's ridiculous. There are plenty of beds here."

"I'm not staying in Stefan's room. Or the couch."

Damon's brows furrowed as though Alaric was being deliberately obtuse. "You know there's another bed upstairs."

They were dating the same girl, but still it took Alaric that extra moment to realise what Damon was talking about. When he did, his eyebrows shot straight up. "You're not talking about...!"

Damon shrugged as though suggesting Alaric crash in his bed with him and Elena was nothing at all. "It's a big bed."

Alaric stared at the older vampire, as though staring at him long enough would help him see what a ridiculous idea that was. 

Huffing out a sigh, Damon shook his head. "Seriously, Ric, I would have thought you'd be less uptight."

"Uptight?" Alaric could hardly believe it. The lifted pitch of his voice said as much. " _I'm_ uptight. Says the man who's also dating my girlfriend. What, exactly, am I doing that's uptight?"

"Lots of things." As always, Damon behaved as though he was the only reasonable one in the room. "For starters, this is the first time you've suggested talking about it. I thought I was going to have to drag some sort of opinion out of you."

For a moment, Alaric could do nothing but stare at Damon, stunned.

But Damon went on. "Secondly, you're completely ignoring one of the glaringly obvious upsides this alternative arrangement offers to us."

By this time, being both in his drinks and tired, Alaric could only ask, "And what's that?"

The corner of Damon's lips lifted in amusement. Alaric tried to tell if it was mocking or not. "We're both reasonably close. We share a close _drinking_ relationship. We're both at least marginally good looking men."

Alaric just stared at Damon. He waited for his friend's expression to change, for the 'gotcha' moment. It didn't come. 

"Oh, Damon," he said, wincing and closing his eyes. "I'm too tired for this."

"As I said," said Damon, "there's a bed upstairs."


End file.
